


Ain't Enough Street Lights In This City

by Ceranovis (KiiKitsune)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Falling Out of Love, M/M, One-Sided Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 05:26:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18844546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiiKitsune/pseuds/Ceranovis
Summary: Mark and Donghyuck are stuck at a red light.





	Ain't Enough Street Lights In This City

**Author's Note:**

> Just a drabble loosely inspired by the song "Red Light" by Ria Mae, which I highly recommend (along with pretty much all her other songs).

Donghyuck _knows_ at half past ten on a Friday night, sitting in the passenger side of Mark’s Hyundai, stopped at a red light. He can see it in the way Mark’s hands flex on the steering wheel, in the set of Mark’s jaw, in the way he stares straight forward at the empty road before them.

Donghyuck fidgets with the box of leftovers going cold in his lap. He’s never been one to avoid confrontation, but this isn’t a fight. He wishes it was. He knows how to fight with Mark. They’ve done it so many times, over and over again through the years, that it’s as much a part of their relationship as holding hands and laughing at each other’s terrible bedhead. But this? He can’t do this.

“You’re thinking too loudly,” he says. Mark looks at him, finally, sharp eyes cutting over to where Donghyuck has shrunk down against the door, swaddled by the seatbelt.

“Hyuck…” The sharpness in his eyes smooths out, and under the red-cast lights and soft shadows Mark looks as round-eyed and young as when they first met.

His stomach twists. “Please don’t. Not tonight.”

Mark opens his mouth to reply, but Donghyuck reaches out across the divide to tangle his fingers in Mark’s hair and surges forward. The food tips off his lap, Styrofoam popping open and spilling lukewarm pasta into the footwell. The seatbelt cuts into the left side of his chest. He sucks the words from Mark’s lips, licking the bitter taste of them off Mark’s tongue until they dissolve into nothing in his own mouth.  

They break for air, but as far as Donghyuck can tell there’s none left in the car. His throat feels too tight and he’s drowning in the sickly orange of the streetlamps. The light is still red, and the street is still just as desolate. Nothing has changed.

Mark takes Donghyuck’s wrists, drawing Donghyuck’s hands out of his hair. Donghyuck tries to twist his hands around, to catch Mark’s, to hold on, but Mark slips through his fingers. “What are you doing, Hyuck?”

Voice low and soothing, Mark is being gentler with him than he’s been in years. It’s terrifying.

“I dropped the food.”

Mark glances down at the mess. “You did.”

“Aren’t you mad? You should be mad.”

“Do you want me to be?” Mark looks tired, he thinks. “It wasn’t going to be that good anymore, anyways.”

“It was still good enough to keep though, wasn’t it?”

Mark sighs and turns back to the steering wheel. Donghyuck can see the words being pieced together behind Mark’s eyes, slotting together and being pulled apart again when they don’t fit quite right. Mark hasn’t found the right combination yet, but he’s looking. Donghyuck _knows_ he’s looking, the same way he knows Mark will find those perfect last words eventually.

The light turns green and Mark takes them forward, away from the crossroads.


End file.
